Atrix 4G vs. Optimus 2X Dual Core Face-Off

The dual core revolution is finally upon us, but does it live up to the hype? The Motorola Atrix 4G and the LG Optimus 2x are the first of the powerhouse Android smartphones to feature the Nvidia Tegra 2 SoC (System on a Chip). Our friends over at Android and Me decided to put both phones through the paces in a comparison test and added in some notable entries from last year to see how much actual improvement these next generation devices offer.

Same Dual Core Very Different Performance

Included in this round of testing were the 2 dual core devices, along with the only Android 2.3 devices (Nexus S and Nexus One), the T-Mobile G2, and the popular Motorola Droid. All device were run using their stock Android versions and with an active WiFi connection to resemble real world scenarios.

Neocore

Neocore is an OpenGL-ES 1.1 graphics performance benchmark for Android devices. It is one of the oldest benchmarks still used and the LG Optimus 2x cake walked through it at 77.2 FPS (frames per second). The Atrix 4G running the same dual core Tegra 2 lags behind the Optimus mainly because it runs at a higher resolution then all of the other devices coming in at (960 x540). The increased detail and pixel density has a much higher hit on performance than any other factor and the lower score comes with the benefit of sharper appearance.

Nenamark1

Nenamark1 is a benchmark/demo of OpenGL ES 2.0, and features more up to date graphic effects taxing the GPU more than Neocore. The Optimus 2x is once again the highest performer and much to the dismay of the Atrix 4G it comes in 3rd again bested by the single core Nexus S. The resolution has a large impact with regards to OpenGL performance.

Smartbench 2011

Smartbench 2011 is a dual core friendly benchmark application that measures the overall performance of your smartphone. It reports both Productivity and Games Index to suit both productivity users and 3D gaming users. This new benchmark showed the new core's potential and it earned 3 times the productivity score of the highest ranking single core device. It is in the productivity sweet where resolution does not play a factor and the Atrix 4G with its full 1GB of ram comes out on top.

The gaming score which is also optimized for dual core shows the Optimus 2x on top but the Atrix 4G with its higher resolution is not far behind, and was still able to best the single core offerings.

GLBenchmark 2.0.3

GLBenchmark 2.0 has been designed from the ground up to demonstrate and measure the true potential of OpenGL ES 2.0 Hardware. Again the Optimus 2x shows that when it comes to gaming it just can't be beat. The Nexus S and Atrix 4G are close but it's the same old story of resolution hindering performance in a beauty vs speed trade-off.

Linpack

Linpack gives results in millions of floating point operations per second (MFLOPS) and allows you to compare to other scores in the database. This test appears to have no performance gain for the dual core devices and they perform equally with the 1Ghz Nexus One. The Nexus S lags in this test but real world performance is equal to that of the Nexus One so take that as you may.

Sunspider Javascript 0.9.1

Sunspider Javascript benchmark tests the core JavaScript language only, not the DOM or other browser APIs. It is designed to compare different versions of the same browser, and different browsers to each other. Again this test has the two dual core phones neck and neck with a tiny advantage to the Optimus 2x.

Dual Core Face-Off Results

The Atrix 4G definitely has acceptable performance numbers in 3D gaming test and it comes down to preference on rather you want the absolute best performance or are willing to take a hit for improved quality. Are these results surprising to any of you paying attention to the new dual core superphones being released this year?

Benchmarks do their best to represent real world performance comparisons but they do not always tell the complete story. If you look purely at the numbers presented it would seem that the Optimus 2x handily outperforms the Atrix 4G despite them running almost identical internals.

The results seem to lie in the difference of display resolution with the Optimus 2x running (800 x 480) and the Atrix 4G running (960 x 540). The extra resolution and enhanced appearance comes at the cost of performance when it comes to 3d graphics, while the Atrix and its 1GB of RAM take the lead in productivity test.